It seems to me like one of those roses that just wants to grow big. Lordly Oberon is like that. I gave up trying to keep it down. I would prune it and then it wouldn't bloom until it grew those long canes back. I think also because it blooms on the end of its canes with no lateral blooms when it gets larger it all seems more sparse.

Hi Bart: NPK of alfalfa hay is 2.45 nitrogen, 0.5 phosphorus, and 2.1 potassium. LAST YEAR I put lots of alfalfa meal and grass clippings on my tomatoes ... they grew like weeds, taller than me, and I had to stake them, plus water them.

This year zero alfalfa, zero grass clippings .. I used cocoa mulch, NPK 3-1-4 (slower release nitrogen), plus extra potassium. My tomatoes are much shorter, no need to stake nor water, lots of higher quality fruits.

My experience with alfalfa meal is: the nitrogen release is very fast, and too much growth, need more watering plus staking. Bart, your roses look great, lots of blooms.

bart, your picture gives me hope; your TIMF is beautiful and maybe mine will consent to grow like that too in a few years. Love the lilac-pink soft color. What a lovely garden scene.

Ingrid

Thank you all for your responses. Ingrid and Strawberry, thank you for your compliments. I guess you can see why I don't want to give up on this rose. Now,one reason why I am reluctant to just whack TIMF down to a shorter height is that I am afraid that TIMF's natural growth habit may well be exactly as mendocino rose says.The canes that I've tried to spiral up on the tripod don't seem to want to put out short, floriferous laterals ,for example. Not the nicest habit, perhaps, but if I could get it to bloom properly at this size,I'd be happy; that colour is just so beautiful,and it DOES seem to want to flower a lot,too. I'm planning on growing a climber onto the tripod next year,to hide the slight gawkiness of TIMF. I'm adding lots and lots of plain native soil,and I think I'm going to aim for Strawberry's plan of zero alfalfa etc. on TIMF. I say "aim" for it, because since there are other roses all around TIMF that do benefit from the alfalfa,i don't want to hold it off completely,especially because it's one of the very few bulky organic goodies that I can buy here in Italy. What nutrients does cocoa mulch supply, Strawberry? If I could find that I'd try it for sure! I know that my poor soil definitely does need ORGANIC MATTER as well as chemical fertilizer (I am worried about over-dosing with that)Does anyone know of what kind of organic matter would be particularly high in potassium?I think I wind up over-dosing with the alfalfa just because I know it's organic and can't "poison" the soil,but it would be good to know of some stuff that's high in the other stuff as well...bart

Bart, can you get any kind of manure--rabbit, horse, llama--whatever? That is my standby for my sandy, dead soil. I live on the ridge, the first part of Florida that arose from the sea, so you can imagine what my soil is like. I get mine from a stable, so it's mixed with wood shavings, and my roses love it.

Hi Bart: Horse manure NPK is 1.5 / 1 / 1.5. Horse manure on a bedding (wood chips, wood shavings, saw dust, straw, hay) is more diluted with NPK 0.7 / 0.3 /0.6.

The stable here changed their bedding from recycled wood chips to wet hay and wood shavings ... no more fungicide benefit from the recycled wood ... so I don't get that stuff anymore. I use cocoa mulch, high in potassium and all trace elements, NPK 3-1-4,

The best source of potassium is banana peels, NPK 0-3-42 ... super high at 42 for potassium. I checked with my grocery store when they throw out bananas, and get them for cheap. The Coffee Shop Starbucks also give me free bananas peel and coffee grinds.

Rosie in the English Roses Forum informed me that when an Austin is stingy, give it potassium ... it worked really well with Crown Princess Magareta and Eglantyne. Potassium sulfate has salt index of 42, sulfate of potash salt index is 43, muriate of potash (potassium chloride) salt index is 116.2.

Unfortunately the commercial "Potash" is the high-salt Muriate of potash, it's cheap and widely available ... we use that stuff to de-ice our sidewalk in zone 5a winter.

Bart, your rose garden looks great ... Alfalfa meal does stimulate growth on wimpy roses, but I withhold that stuff from vigorous ones .. I'm really lazy in pruning and staking.

floridarosez9,

I know I need manure too. Didn't know that the type was not too relevant? I have sandy, horrible soil, so any of it would likely do my soil good. I used cow's manure in an island bed at a previous home, and boy were those roses beautiful. I know it works.

This had been my dilemma for two years, my fear is giving my husband flashbacks. He's told me stories about growing up in Camarillo,CA., his dad coming home with the truck bed filled with manure, and being knee deep in it while shoveling it into wheel barrows and putting it in the garden. Despite all of the daredevil cycling during his youth, his only broken bone in life came during one of those shoveling manure into the raised bed in the garden days. Almost needless to say, shoveling manure is far from bringing back any "pleasant memories". I could be buying a bunch of those little bags at the local nursery; but I clearly need it. Maybe I can ask my gardeners to load up their truck with manure.....

My gosh, little strawberryhill, how do you get all of the manure into your garden.

Lynn

Lynn,

I am busy hauling what seems like a mountain of horse manure to moms, I put it in trash cans (I like the 20g $20 heavy duty cans from Home Depot) they are heavy but not super heavy and they fit nicely in a wheelbarrow. I can roll the wheel barrow around easily and then use things like a shovel or garden trowel to put where I want the first half of the can, then I dump the last half right from the can.

One thing to remember is the weather and the effect on plants. If you have high heat and drought, you might have to water your plants vs lots of gray rainy days, no need to water and different growth due to weather. Lots of factors to consider.

Kippy-the-Hippy,

I only amend during mid February and mid to late August; so soon. We are the driest major city in the country, so watering is just a given here; daily during the summer until a garden is established. There would not be anything here if we did not water; trees included, and believe it or not, in Las Vegas, we can only grow many varieties of cacti if we wrap them during the winter. Four and a half inches of rainfall, in total, annually, spread throughout the year is just not enough. We may have received an 1.5" or so this summer during our "Monsoon" season.

Thank you for the manure in a trash can suggestion. While my hubby may not relish the idea of filling a truck with manure, and I really do not want to subject him to that, getting a 20 gallon trash can, or maybe even something larger would possibly be okay. My 13 year old stepson is 6 ft tall and strong, he can help too:) I could even purchase something on wheels so I can move it around the yard myself:) Ha, double solution, as I cannot lift anything over 10 lbs ( back issues) I can now be more independent in my gardening.

Thank You So Much!!!!!

Lynn

This post was edited by desertgarden561 on Mon, Aug 12, 13 at 13:50

I buy pelleted manure from a store. There is a stable nearby, but it is just so much work lugging the bags of manure uphill to the car, so I stopped getting it there.
I'll ask at a store if they will sell me over-ripe bananas cheaply.Can you give me an idea of how many bananas are needed and how often they should be applied,Strawberry? I did buy a bag of muriate of potash when I was visiting the USA,but only found out about the salt issue afterwards.Can one still use it safely in the garden, if one uses it in a controlled matter, and maybe waters the treated plant thoroughly after applying? Also, does potassium remain in the soil for a long time, or does it drain away quickly like nitrogen?Would it make any sense to apply it to the soil during a rainy autumn? Thanks so much for everyone's help! bart

Hi Bart: Nurseries are right in telling folks, "No fertilizers on Rugosa, more harm than help." I put bananas on Eglantyne (Rugosa heritage) ... it hates that stuff.

Hybrid Perpetuals are known as heavy-feeder. My Paul Neyron and Duchess de Rohan like the banana peel /molasses/vinegar solution. High nitrogen and high potassium drives down calcium. Unsulphured, blackstrap molasses has 20% calcium, 17% potassium, 20% iron, plus all trace elements.

If your soil is alkaline clay with limestone like mine, a bit of vinegar helps to release the calcium tied-up. I use less than 1 tablespoon of molasses/banana peels/vinegar per a large bucket of water. Roses became wilted with too much acid and sugar in the heat.

Nitrogen mobility is a 10, moves down easily with water. Potassium mobility is a 3, somewhat mobile. Phosphorus mobility is a 1, stay put where applied. That's why I soak banana peels NPK 0-3-42, with a bit of vinegar in water to extract the phosphorus of 3 from the banana. I put molasses because it's a chelating agent, to make nutrients more available to plant.

Last 2 years I put tons of banana peels around particular rose bushes late fall ... no black spots whatsoever on those. The inside of a banana is high in sugar, animals eat most of it, the peel is high in potassium, so rain water (pH 5.6) helps to move the potassium into alkaline clay.

If you use the entire banana (including the sweet stuff inside), then no need to add molasses.

For horse manure, see the below excerpt from the soil forum, posted by dirtydan, zone 8-9: "Here in north Los Angeles County we have practically unlimited amounts of composted horse manure available for free ... despite weed seeds and pathogens ...

I mixed a large sample of manure with distilled water, I inserted my pH meter into the water and got a reading of 10.1. Thinking that the meter must be out of whack I checked my tap water and then some vinegar for calibration reference. The meter was working properly.

After a little research I learned that stables frequently add lime to horse manure for odor control. Adding limed manure could raise the soil pH significantly for many years, causing severe nutrient deficiencies in the plants."

Here's another excerpt from the below link: "Professor Rice recalled one case of an exuberant gardener thrilled with the offer of horse manure from a neighbor's farm. in CA. "Within three or four years, it was so salty we had to leach the salts out of her garden," Rice said. "... grapes don't like a lot of nitrogen and the salt must be very low...."Fresh animal manure should be composted, mixed up and stirred, leached with water to remove salt," Rice said."

**** From Straw: We have 40" of rain and 23" of snow in my zone 5a. I got horse manure and mixed with soil, disaster, severe salt-burns, I spent 1 day replacing the soil of the entire rose bed. Another time I got fresh manure and spent the entire year pulling weeds.

I got smarter and got composted manure, the black stuff after spring flood. No weeds, but the horse-manure mulched roses are the ones that demand water in hot weather ... I suspect from the salt. I don't water my roses mulched with leaves for the past 6 years.

The salt in the manure, plus the high pH isn't worth the hassle. It kept my roses clean when the stable used recycled wood chips (with fungicide), but this year the bedding is wet hay and wood shavings that retain moisture .. I saw tons of mushroom in the pile, pretty gross.

Here is a link that might be useful: Horse manure and grape vines

Found the link on horse manure and salt ... it's a relief NOT having to drive 5 minutes and load up manure. Horse manure is great for sandy soil, where salt is leached out easily. But for my heavy clay soil already high in salt, salt can't be leached out. Some excerpts from link below:

"High salt manures added to heavy (clay-based) soils in areas with low levels of rainfall may result in a salt buildup in excess of the tolerance level of the plant being grown. This is even more serious for soils already high in salts. ...

A survey of 156 manure samples collected in 1996 throughout Colorado indicated manures had salt levels from 3.3 mmhos/cm3 to a high of 42.8 mmhos/cm3. Many vegetable crops have salt tolerances between 1.5 mmhos/cm3 and 4 mmhos/cm3 and when high salt manures are used around these plants, severe damage can occur."

Here is a link that might be useful: Colorado State University on horse manure

O,Strawberry,I am so touched and grateful for all the trouble you have gone to to explain it all, but, could you "dumb it down" a bit for me? are you saying that it's probably just as well that I just buy the manure product?and not go to the trouble of getting it free? does the fact that potassium and phosphorus are less mobile mean that it could be plausible to apply these in "synthetic" form (i.e.,as a chemical, bought fertilizer instead of as an organic-matter thing) in the rainy autumn /winter,so the rain could drain out the salt a bit? )Could I use this muriate of potash safely this way?How I wish I could get stuff like cocoa mulch, etc, here! And, another thing...how about green manure plants? which ones would add potassium and phospate to my soil? i already know alfalfa for nitrogen,plus bean-like plants and clover for nitrogen, but I'd like to know for the other two main elements. Remember, forum maties, I do NOT HAVE REAL GARDEN SOIL.I am trying to "make " garden soil. I got from a poster on the English Roses forum the concept that ,poor and pathetic as it may seem, one really DOES NEED plain native " dirt" and/or "mud",for,poor as it may be in NPK, it may well have a lot of those trace minerals...Strawberry, how can you tell if your soil is high in salt? and what is your opinion on that muriate of potash? go ahead, throw out an opinion!!! I won't hold it against you if it doesn't work out in my garden!!! it just seems clear to me that you have a point of view so different from mine(I'm an artist; you're a scientist) that I can't help but think that my garden can benefit from my englobing your point of view with mine! (a.k.a.,"join forces and we can rule the world,(or at least, the garden???) LOL,LOL and double LOL) cheers, bart

Hi Bart: Thank you for asking for simple terms, then I don't have to spend hours pulling up U. of. Extension research. If your soil sticks to your shoes, then it's clay and high in salt. Magnesium is what makes clay sticky, thus no need to add Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate).

Clay soil is fertile and high in salt, no need for chemical fertilizer. What clay soil needs is buffering agent, or organic matter to neutralize the soil pH, and create space between the tight particles. Clay soil can be acidic like my last house, or alkaline like my present house. Organic matter like leaves buffer extremes in pH.

Peatmoss, pH 4, glues up with clay because it's a fine particle. I get better result with large chunk organic matter, leaves (acidic at first, but buffers later), pine park (pH 4.5, acidifies longer, since it decomposes very slow).

Sandy soil, and loose/loamy soil benefit from manures and chemical fertilizer... salt is not a problem since it can be leached out when the soil is loose with good drainage.

I already tested muriate of potash (potassium chloride) ... My husband bought that by mistake instead of sulfate of potash. 3 roses haven't recuperate from the salt-damage and wilting, despite tons of watering. I will never use that stuff, except to de-ice in zone 5a winter.

I put that muriate of potash on the new bed of tomatoes ... blossom end rots, had to throw 3/4 tomatoes away. High potassium drives down calcium, resulting in black-fungal on the bottom half of the tomatoes.

I prefer unsulfured, blackstrap molasses as soluble fertilizer for clay soil, since it's cheap & low-salt, with NPK 3-1-5, 20% potassium, 17% calcium, 20% iron, and trace elements. That's better than cocoa mulch with NPK 3-1-4, and way-better than horse manure/bedding at NPK 0.7 / 0.3 / 0.6.

Bart, your green manures and alfalfa hay are great for clay. Here's an excerpt from the link below "At the end of that first growing season we moved some roots of mint into the bed with the roses. The thinking there was that mint brings a substantial amount of minerals and other nutrients from the sub soil to the top soil because of the it’s deep roots.

During the year as the mint grew to around a foot tall we’d cut it back and mulch around the roses with the cut mint. We’re still doing that now, so the roses get fed and we’ve got lots of mint for tea. The routine now is that during the year when the roses are in flower they’re constantly mulched and fed with cut mint, in the winter they’re pruned hard back and mulched with layers of hay."

*** From Straw: I think it's clever to use plants like mint to fertilize roses, plus to keep deer away. Nutritional analysis of mint: 9% vitamin A, 2% vitamin C, 2% calcium, 7% iron, and 6% manganese ... the last 2 are much needed in alkaline soil to fix chlorosis.

The picture of Summer Samba rose I posted in the other thread with very dark green leaves ... that has tons of clover growing in the pot. Roots of plants secret acid, so the soil where there was decomposed grass, tested less alkaline in red-cabbage juice. The soil with nothing growing on it, is rock-hard and very alkaline.

Thank you, Bart, for that great idea about clover, I'm going to order clover seeds, they make a nice carpet around roses. Below is another shot of Summer Samba, bought from RU end of June, you can see the clover growing inside the pot, which I foolishly killed most of them:

Here is a link that might be useful: Growing roses without manure

This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Mon, Aug 12, 13 at 18:05

Remember this part about what Strawberry posted:

"After a little research I learned that stables frequently add lime to horse manure for odor control. Adding limed manure could raise the soil pH significantly for many years, causing severe nutrient deficiencies in the plants."

Not all manure is the same, stuff from a feed lot (cows) or from a stable might have to have something added to deal with the odors.

The good part about picking it up from the source, is you can see where it is coming from. Like when I get it, no stalls, no wood chips, no lime, no De, no salt licks.... just manure (and TONS of work...lol).

Lynn,

I tried to find rolling carts/trash cans that were smaller and sturdy and did not have any luck. I put the little cans on a dolly cart

I was not referring to Vegas as a place with a lot of rain. I know better, when you get rain it seems to come all at once and wash everything thing away. Very little that would be green and alive with out irrigation out there. Used to visit friends that lived in NLV by the base.

I would love to know if there are any good public rose gardens or botanical gardens for a November visit. My friend and her hubby are coming from New England to renew their vows (50 years) I hope to meet them there and visit the area. I have never been over to the dam or out to Red Rock Canyon. I have taken them to Death Valley and Beatty but not to the lower end of Death Valley.

Thanks!

Kippy-the -Hippy,

The Desert Demonstration Gardens and the Springs Preserves are nice places to visit during November. Wolfgang Puck has a restaurant in the Springs Preserves which is convenient should you become hungry or thirsty.

Las Vegas is about an hour and a half from Utah, and it takes about another hour to get to Zion National Park and then Bryce Canyon. I have never been there during November, as they get "real winters"; but if you or they have never been there, both places are breathtaking and worth the short trip.

Lynn

Thanks Lynn,

We all love Bryce and Zion and they are very pretty to visit in November, I would like to go over the winter for a nice storm someday. But I don't think she wants to go there this trip. We are photography friends so we tend to visit some pretty spots! I think we are headed there in the spring.

I will have to check out that demo garden.

Thanks

Hi Bart: I double-check on Muriate of Potash, or potassium chloride NPK 0-0-60, (potassium of 60) salt index of 116, one agricultural site documented its harmful effect on young plants, but it benefits mature plants, if there's plenty of water.

Banana peels with NPK 0-3-42, high potassium at 42, no salt, is a much better choice, since it also provides decent phosphorus at 3 for flowering and root growth.

I posted a research done by Texas A & M University on the role of gypsum (calcium sulfate) in stimulating plant growth, in the thread "Strawberryhill (Theresa)".

This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Tue, Aug 13, 13 at 9:51

Kippy, you might also like to visit Ethel m cactus gardens and chocolate factory. The chocolate factory was created by Forrest Mars in tribute to his mother and the garden he put in for his employees. He had Gary Lyons a designer for the Huntington Botanical gardens design it and it is great.

20 years ago when it was more like what he had designed it was really spectacular but although they have since made parts of it more "landscaped" looking and less naturalistic it still has a lot of its original plants. It shows how beautiful desert landscaping can be and is worth the visit.

Maria

I'm trying to find a source for buying molasses here in Tuscany through the computer. Thanks for checking up on the muriate of potash thing for me,Strawberry. I guess since I already have it I might use it on some mature plants, but I won't buy it again I think! I know for sure that my soil needs bulky organic matter far more than chemical powders...bart

Thank you Maria! I bet my friends would enjoy that garden too.